One of the biggest problems I have is that I think of many great and wonderful ideas during the day, however, my ability to discern whether these are truly any good is when I actually tell someone about the idea (typically my wife). My brain seems to be able to be much more critical of my ideas once it has it as input from my ears, and hence why my wife keeps giving me the look of, “… this is another one of your “great ideas”…”, when I start telling her about things. Most of the time she doesn’t even have to comment on my concept, I will usually end my monologue with the statement, “but that was just a load of cod’s wallop”.

I was known to talk to my dog about money, he listened well, but maybe didn’t stop me from making a few financial blunders (not his fault though, after all, he was a dog)

The same is true for money ideas for a lot of folks. You can think about great investing ideas or concepts as much as you want, but if you don’t talk to someone about it, you may be in danger of having a “great idea” that maybe wasn’t as great as you thought. How can you remedy this? Find someone who you respect, who is also discreet (I realize that makes for a very small number of folks for most of us) to have money conversations, and that may help.

For many of us who are married our spouses end up being that “sounding post” for our great ideas, but for single folks, or folks who feel their spouse’s opinions are less than sound, you will need to hunt around to find out who you can “spill your financial guts” to.

I am lucky because I have a few Financial confidants, and have had some excellent advice and/or opinions from many of the finest financial bloggers including Preet Banerjee, Michael James on Money, Mark from Blunt Bean Counter (even if he is a Leafs fan), Mark from My Own Advisor, the Canadian Capitalist and many others. My guess is you don’t have access to as many experts as I do, however, see if you can find someone to hash out your financial peccadilloes.

My other advice is that if your wife or spouse is your Financial Confidant, don’t talk about money at bedtime. I can assure you that it might sound like a great idea, but I can also attest that this is not a great idea, no financial pillow-talk.